72 THE CHINA STUDYBecause China is relatively homogenous genetically, it was clear that
these differences had to be explained by environmental causes. This
raised a number of critical questions:- Why was cancer so high in some rural Chinese counties and not in
others? - Why were these differences so incredibly large?
- Why was overall cancer, in the aggregate, less common in China
than in the U.5.?
The more Dr. Chen and I talked, the more we wished that we had
a snapshot in time of the dietary and environmental conditions in ru-
ral China. If only we could look into these people's lives, note what
they eat, how they live, what is in their blood and their urine and how
they die. If only we could construct a picture of their experience with
unprecedented clarity and detail so that we could study it for years to
come. If we could do that, we might be able to offer some answers to
our "why" questions.
Occasionally science, politics and financing come together in a way
that allows a truly extraordinary study to take place. This happened for
us, and we got the opportunity to do everything we wanted, and more.
We were able to create the most comprehensive snapshot of diet, life-
style and disease ever taken.
PULLING IT TOGETHERWe assembled a world-class scientific team. There was Dr. Chen, who
was the deputy director of the most significant government diet and
health research laboratory in all of China. We enlisted Dr. Junyao Li,
one of the authors of the Cancer Atlas Survey and a key scientist in Chi-
na's Academy of Medical Sciences in the Ministry of Health. The third
member was Richard Peto of Oxford University. Considered one of the
premier epidemiologists in the world, Peto has since been knighted and
has received several awards for cancer research. I rounded out the team
as the Project Director.
Everything was coming together. It was to be the first major research
project between China and the United States. We cleared the necessary
funding hurdles, weathering both CIA intrusiveness and Chinese gov-
ernment reticence. We were on our way.
We decided to make the study as comprehensive as possible. From
the Cancer Atlas, we had access to disease mortality rates on more than